ICPR Abstracts: Invited Speakers

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Sunday, August 4, 8:15 pm

Love and the Law

Zick Rubin

The law -- statutes, criminal codes, and case law -- has 
always had a great deal to say about sex and marriage, and 
very little to say (at least overtly) about love.  Yet 
conceptions of love are highly relevant to the development 
of the law in a variety of domains. This paper, written 
from the speaker's perspective as both a social 
psychologist and a lawyer, will consider the links between 
legal conceptions of love, on the one hand, and 
psychological theory and research, on the other.





Monday, August 5, 9:00-10:00 am

From Madison to Banff Safely, 
But Miles To Go

Ellen Berscheid, University of Minnesota

The first international conference for the study of 
interpersonal relationships was held at the University of 
Wisconsin in 1982.  The concluding invited address of that 
conference was an analysis of the epistemological 
problems that would likely be confronted in the further 
development of the young science of relationships.  (The 
published address appeared as Berscheid, E. [1986].  Mea 
culpas and lamentations:  Sir Francis, Sir Isaac, and "The 
slow progress of soft psychology".  In R. Gilmour & S. 
Duck [Eds.], The emerging field of personal relationships 
[pp. 267-268].  Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.)
        Almost 15 years will have elapsed between that 
conference and the Banff ISSPR conference.  The present 
address will discuss, from the vantage point of the 1994 
Annual Review article discussing recent relationship 
research and from a review of relationships research for 
the forthcoming new edition of the  Handbook of Social 
Psychology, the problems noted in 1982 that we have 
successfully solved, those that still plague relationship 
researchers, and additional, unforeseen, problems that 
have become apparent as the relationships field has begun 
to take a more distinct shape. Despite these problems, the 
cumulative character of the field and clear progress is 
evident.  Examples of relationship researchers' success in 
understanding important phenomena that 15 years ago 
were either ignored or were misunderstood will be 
discussed.




Monday, August 5, 3:30-4:30 pm

What's Skilled About Social Skills?
Some Troubling Consequences of Finding 
That Skill Similarity Promotes Attraction

Brant Burleson, Purdue University

This talk will review research by Burleson and his 
associates examining how social skills contribute to 
relationship development, exploring some of the 
challenges this research poses for popular conceptions of 
"social skill."  Several recent studies of friends, dating 
partners, and married couples have found that people who 
have similar levels of social-cognitive and communication 
skills are more attracted to each other and form more 
satisfying relationships with each other than persons 
having dissimilar levels of skills.  In addition, couples 
where both partners have low levels of skills are just as 
satisfied with their relationships as couples where both 
partners have high levels of skills.  The latter finding 
raises important questions about the adequacy of our ideas 
regarding "social skill" and our normative models of 
"satisfying relationships."  Several different theoretical 
accounts for these findings will be sketched, along with 
some issues to be addressed in future research.







Monday August 5, 8:30-9:30 pm

Does Bliss Go Amiss After The First 
Marital Kiss?  A Prospective Study of the 
Early Marital Precursors of Divorce

Ted Huston, University of Texas at Austin

The research to be discussed in my presentation extends a 
social psychological study of the early years of marriage 
(carried out between 1981 & 1983) into a long-term 
porspective study of the antecedents of dissatisfaction and 
divorce (the follow-up data were gathered during the fall 
of 1994).  Three models pertaining to the psychological 
and interpersonal roots of the deterioration of relationships 
will be examined:  (a) The disillusionment model portrays 
lovers as less than fully attentive to each other's--and the 
relationship's--shortcomings until after the wedding knot is 
tied.  (b) The perpetual problems model, in contrast, 
suggests that partners' psychological dispositions come 
into play early in relationships and that, as a consequence, 
partners' feelings and views about each other reflect the 
underlying, relatively stable, psychological infrastructure 
of the relationship during courtship, when couples are 
newlyweds, and after couples have been married several 
years.  (c) The accommodation model posits that when 
disppointments or incompatible desires surface in the 
relationship they initially create disappointments and 
antagonisms; over time, however, spouses come to terms 
with each other and make the adjustments necessary to 
maintaining a satisfactory bond.
        The models briefly outlined above make 
different predictions concerning the extent to which, and 
ways in which, partners' dispositions affect the course of 
relationships.  The models will be examined in terms of 
how well they account for the cohesion and stability of 
marriages examined over a 13-year period.  More 
specifically, cohesion and stability will be examined in 
connection with (a) the couples' courtship experiences, (b) 
the personality characteristics spouses bring to their 
marriages, (c) the way husbands and wives treat each 
other during their first two years of marriage; (d) the 
spouses' beliefs about each other's personality (as these 
beliefs changed over the first two years of marriage); and 
(e) spouses' marital sarisfaction and love during the first 
two years of marriage.








Wednesday, August 7, 9:00-10:00 am

Exploring Vertical Webs:  
Family Ties in Aging Societies

Gunhild Hagestad, University of Oslo

Recent demographic and social changes have transformed 
family life. Altered patterns of mortality have not only 
created relationships of unprecedented duration, but have 
also made the timing of family deaths more predictable.  
These changes may make us quite vulnerable to 
"untimely" illness and death.  As the number of children 
per family has decreased, we have witnessed a 
"verticalization" of family ties:  A greater proportion of 
family relationships are conducted across generational 
lines rather than with generational peers.  Many of these 
stable vertical relationships have few cultural guidelines 
and necessitate continuous negotiation of expectations 
among partners who represent different developmental 
phases and historical anchorings.  Thus, families have 
become intense negotiation arenas.  Men and women show 
marked contrasts in demographic patterns as well as in 
their orientations to vertical relationships.




Wednesday, August 7, 3:30-4:30 pm 

Lay Relationship Ideals:  
Their Structure and Function

Garth Fletcher, University of Canterbury

Relationship ideals are first theoretically located within an 
overarching model of cognition in close relationship 
contexts.  A program of research is described that develops 
and validates a measure of relationship and partner ideals.  
It was found that relationship and partner ideals form three 
interrelated components, which people assign different 
weights to:  Intimacy, Excitement, and Screening 
variables.  It was also found that the larger the discrepancy 
between the Intimacy ideals and judgements of an actual 
intimate relationship, the less satisfied people reported 
being with the relationship.  In a second longitudinal study 
of people in the first four months of their dating 
relationship, it was found that the more satisfied people 
were with their relationships, the more they reduced the 
discrepancy between their ideals and their perception of 
the actual relationship over time.  A range of other results 
are also reported.  Conclusions are drawn and implications 
discussed.